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A Song^ of the Guns 

By Gilbert Frankau, R.S.A. 



THE WEW POETRY SERIES 




HOUGHTON MIFFI»IN COMPANY 

Boston and New York 




Classy 

Book // ->. , 



COPYRIGHT DEFOSm 



®:|)e iliJeto |3octrp §»crie6 

PUBLISHED BY 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 



IRRADIATIONS. SAND AND SPRAY. John Gould 
Fletcher. 

SOME IMAGIST POETS. 

JAPANESE LYRICS. Translated by Lafcadio 
Hearn. 

AFTERNOONS OF APRIL. Grace Hazard Conk- 
ling. 

THE CLOISTER; A VERSE DRAMA. Emile Ver- 

HAEREN. 

INTERFLOW. Geoffrey C. Faber. 

STILLWATER PASTORALS AND OTHER POEMS. 

Paul Shivell. 
IDOLS. Walter Conrad Arensberg. 
TURNS AND MOVIES, AND OTHER TALES IN 

VERSE. Conrad Aiken. 
ROADS. Grace Fallow Norton. 
GOBLINS AND PAGODAS. John Gould Fletcher. 
SOME IMAGIST POETS, 1916. 
A SONG OF THE GUNS. Gilbert Frankau. 



A SONG OF THE GUNS 



A SONG OF THE GUNS 



BY 
GILBERT FRANKAU, R.S.A. 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
1916 



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COPYRIGHT, I916, BY GILBERT FRANKAU 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

Published April igib 



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©CU4289r39 
MAY 12 1916 



r- NOTE 

A Song of the Guns was written under what are prob- 
ably the most remarkable conditions in which a poem has 
ever been composed. The author, who is now serving in 
Flanders, was present at the battle of Loos, and during a 
lull in the fightidg — when the gunners, who had been sleep- 
less for five nights, were resting like tired dogs under their 
guns — he jotted down the main theme of the poem. After 
the battle the artillery brigade to which he was attached was 
ordered to Ypres, and it was during the long trench warfare 
in this district, within sight of the ruined tower of Ypres 
Cathedral, that the poem was finally completed. The last 
three stanzas were written at midnight in Brigade Head- 
quarters with the German shells screaming over into the 
ruined town. 



CONTENTS 

The Voice of the Slaves i 

Headquarters 4 

Gun-Teams 6 

Eyes in the Air 9 

Signals i2 

The Observers 14 

Ammunition Column 17 

The Voice of the Guns 20 



A SONG OF THE GUNS 

These are our masters, the slim 

Grim muzzles that irk in the pit; 
That chafe for the rushing of wheels, 

For the teams plunging madly to bit 
As the gunners wing down to unkey. 

For the trails sweeping half-circle-right. 
For the six breech-blocks clashing as one 

To a target viewed clear on the sight — 
Gray masses the shells search and tear 

Into fragments that bunch as they run — 
For the hour of the red battle-harvest. 

The dream of the slaves of the gun ! 

We have bartered our souls to the guns ; 

Every fibre of body and brain 
Have we trained to them, chained to them. Serfs ? 

Aye ! but proud of the weight of our chain, 
Of our backs that are bowed to their workings. 

To hide them and guard and disguise. 
Of our ears that are deafened with service. 

Of hands that are scarred, and of eyes 
Grown hawklike with marking their prey, 

Of wings that are slashed as with swords 
When we hover, the turn of a blade 

From the death that is sweet to our lords. 



THE VOICE OF THE SLAVES 

By the ears and the eyes and the brain. 
By the Imbs and the hands and the wings. 

We are slaves to our masters the guns; 
But their slaves are the masters of kings ! 



HEADQUARTERS 

A LEAGUE and a league from the trenches, from 
the traversed maze of the lines, — 

Where daylong the sniper watches and daylong the 
bullet whines. 

And the cratered earth is in travail with mines and 
with countermines, — 

Here, where haply some woman dreamed, (are 

those her roses that bloom 
In the garden beyond the windows of my littered 

working-room ?) 
We have decked the map for our masters as a bride 

is decked for the groom. 

Here, on each numbered lettered square, — cross- 
road and mound and wire. 

Loophole, redoubt, and emplacement, are the tar- 
gets their mouths desire, — 

Gay with purples and browns and blues, have we 
traced them their arcs of fire. 
[4] 



HEADQUARTERS 

And ever the type-keys clatter ; and ever our keen 

wires bring 
Word from the watchers a-crouch below, word 

from the watchers a-wing ; 
And ever we hear the distant growl of our hid guns 

thundering ; 

Hear it hardly, and turn again to our maps, where 
the trench-lines crawl, 

Red on the gray and each with a sign for the ran- 
ging shrapnel's fall — 

Snakes that our masters shall scotch at dawn, as is 
written here on the wall. 

For the weeks of our waiting draw to a close. . . . 
There is scarcely a leaf astir 

In the garden beyond my windows where the twi- 
light shadows blur 

The blaze of some woman's roses. . . . 

" Bombardment orders, sir." 



GUN-TEAMS 

Their rugs are sodden, their heads are down, their 
tails are turned to the storm. 
(Would you know them, you that groomed them 
in the sleek fat days of peace, — 
When the tiles rang to their pawings in the lighted 
stalls and warm, — 
Now the foul clay cakes on breeching-strap and 
clogs the quick-release ?) 

The blown rain stings, there is never a star, the 
tracks are rivers of slime. 
(You must harness up by guesswork with a fail- 
ing torch for light. 
Instep-deep in unmade standings, for it 's active- 
service time. 
And our resting weeks are over, and we move 
the guns to-night.) 

The iron tires slither, the traces sag; their blind 
hooves stumble and slide; 
[6] 



GUN-TEAMS 

They are war-worn, they are weary, soaked with 

sweat and sopped with rain. 
(You must hold them, you must help them, swing 

your lead and centre wide 
Where the greasy granite pave peters out to 

squelching drain.) 

There is shrapnel bursting a mile in front on the 
road that the guns must take : 
(You are nervous, you are thoughtful, you are 
shifting in your seat. 
As you watch the ragged feathers flicker orange 
flame and break) — 
But the teams are pulling steady down the bat- 
tered village street. 

You have shod them cold, and their coats are long, 
and their bellies gray with the mud; 
They have done with gloss and polish, but the 
fighting heart 's unbroke. 
We, who saw them hobbling after us down white 
roads flecked with blood. 
Patient, wondering why we left them, till we 
lost them in the smoke; 
[7] 



A SONG OF THE GUNS 

Who have felt them shiver between our knees, 
when the shells rain black from the skies. 
When the bursting terrors find us and the lines 
stampede as one ; 
Who have watched the pierced limbs quiver and 
the pain in stricken eyes. 
Know the worth of humble servants, foolish- 
faithful to their gun ! 



EYES IN THE AIR 

Our guns are a league behind us, our target a mile 

below. 
And there's never a cloud to blind us from the 

haunts of our lurking foe — 
Sunk pit whence his shrapnel tore us, support-trench 

crest-concealed. 
As clear as the charts before us, his ramparts lie 

revealed. 
His panicked watchers spy us, a droning threat in 

the void; 
Their whistling shells outfly us — pufFupon pufF, 

deployed 
Across the green beneath us, across the flanking 

In fume and fire to sheathe us and balk us of our 
prey. 

Below, beyond, above her. 

Their iron web is spun ! 
Flicked but unsnared we hover. 

Edged planes against the sun : 
[ 9] 



A SONG OF THE GUNS 

Eyes in the air above his lair. 
The hawks that guide the gun ! 

No word from earth may reach us save, white 
against the ground, 

The strips outspread to teach us whose ears are 
deaf to sound : 

But down the winds that sear us, athwart our en- 
gine's shriek. 

We send — and know they hear us, the ranging 
guns we speak. 

Our visored eyeballs show us their answering pen- 
nant, broke 

Eight thousand feet below us, a whirl of flame- 
stabbed smoke — 

The burst that hangs to guide us, while numbed 
gloved fingers tap 

From wireless key beside us the circles of the map. 

Line — target — short or over — 
Comes, plain as clock-hands run. 

Word from the birds that hover, 
Unblinded, tail to sun — 

Word out of air to range them fair. 
From hawks that guide the gun ! 

[10] 



EYES IN THE AIR 

Your flying shells have failed you, your landward 

guns are dumb : 
Since earth hath naught availed you, these skies be 

open ! Come, 
Where, w^ild to meet and mate you, flame in their 

beaks for breath. 
Black doves! the white hawks wait you on the 

wind-tossed boughs of death. 
These boughs be cold without you, our hearts are 

hot for this. 
Our wings shall beat about you, our scorching 

breath shall kiss : 
Till, fraught with that we gave you, fulfilled of 

our desire. 
You bank, — too late to save you from biting beaks 

of fire, — 

Turn sideways from your lover. 
Shudder and swerve and run. 

Tilt; stagger; and plunge over 
Ablaze against the sun, — 

Doves dead in air, who clomb to dare 
The hawks that guide the gun ! 



SIGNALS 

The hot wax drips from the flares 
On the scrawled pink forms that litter 
The bench where he sits ; the glitter 
Of stars is framed by the sandbags atop of the 
dug-out stairs. 
And the lagging watch-hands creep; 
And his cloaked mates murmur in sleep, — 
Forms he can wake with a kick, — 
And he hears, as he plays with the pressel-switch, 
the strapped receiver click 
On his ear that listens, listens ; 
And the candle-flicker glistens 
On the rounded brass of the switch-board where 
the red wires cluster thick. 

Wires from the earth, from the air ; 
Wires that whisper and chatter 
At night, when the trench-rats patter 
And nibble among the rations and scuttle back to 
their lair; 

[ 12] 



SIGNALS 

Wires that are never at rest, — 
For the linesmen tap them and test. 
And ever they tremble with tone : — 
And he knows from a hundred signals the buzzing 
call of his own. 
The breaks and the vibrant stresses, — 
The Z and the G and the S's 
That call his hand to the answering key and his 
mouth to the microphone. 

For always the laid guns fret 
On the words that his mouth shall utter. 
When rifle and Maxim stutter 
And the rockets volley to starward from the spurt- 
ing parapet ; 
And always his ear must hark 
To the voices out of the dark, — 
For the whisper over the wire. 
From the bombed and the battered trenches where 
the wounded moan in the mire, — 
For a sign to waken the thunder 
Which shatters the night in sunder 
With the flash of the leaping muzzles and the beat 
of battery-fire. 



THE OBSERVERS 

Ere the last light that leaps the night has hung 
and shone and died. 
While yet the breast-high fog of dawn is swathed 
about the plain. 
By hedge and track our slaves go back, the waning 
stars for guide. 
Eyes of our mouths; the mists have cleared, the 
guns would speak again ! 

Faint on the ears that strain to hear, their orders 
trickle down 
** Degrees — twelve — left of zero line — cor- 
rector one three eight — 
Three thousand." . . . Shift our trails and lift the 
muzzles that shall drown 
The rifle's idle chatter when our sendings de- 
tonate. 

Sending or still, these serve our will ; the hidden 
eyes that mark 

[ H] 



THE OBSERVERS 

From gutted farm, from laddered tree that scans 
the furrowed slope. 
From coigns of slag whose pit-ropes sag on bur- 
rowed ways and dark. 

In open trench where sandbags hold the steady 
periscope. 

Waking, they know the instant foe, the bullets 
phutting by. 
The blurring lens, the sodden map, the wires 
that leak or break ! 
Sleeping, they dream of shells that scream adown 
a sunless sky — 
And the splinters patter round them in their 
dug-outs as they wake. 

Not theirs, the wet glad bayonet, the red and rac- 
ing hour. 
The rush that clears the bombing-post with 
knife and hand-grenade ; 
Not theirs the zest when, steel to breast, the last 
survivors cower, — 
Yet can ye hold the ground ye won, save these 
be there to aid ? 

[ '5] 



A SONG OF THE GUNS 

These, that observe the shell 's far swerve, these of 
the quiet voice. 
That bids "go on," repeats the range, corrects 
for fuse or line . . . 
Though dour the task their masters ask, what room 
for thought or choice? 
This is ours by right of service, heedless gift of 
youthful eyne ! 

Careless they give while yet they live ; the dead 
we tasked too sore 
Bear witness we were naught begrudged of riches 
or of youth ; 
Careless they gave; across their grave our calling 
salvoes roar. 
And those we maimed come back to us in proof 
our dead speak truth ! 



AMMUNITION COLUMN 

/ am only a cog in a giant machine y a link of an end- 
less chain : — 
And the rounds are drawn, and the rounds are fired , 

and the empties return again; 
Railroad, lorry, and limber ; battery, column, and park ; 
To the shelf where the set fuse waits the breech, from 

the quay where the shells embark. 
We have watered and fed, and eaten our beef; the 

long dull day drags by. 
As I sit here watching our " Archibalds " strafing 

an empty sky; 
Puff and flash on the far-off blue round the speck 

one guesses the plane — 
Smoke and spark of the gun-machine that is fed 

by the endless chain. 

I am only a cog in a giant machine, a little link 

in the chain. 
Waiting a word from the wagon-lines that the guns 

are hungry again : — 

[ 17] 



A SONG OF THE GUNS 

Column-wagon to battery-wagon^ and battery-wagon to 

gun; 
To the loader kneeling 'twixt trail and wheel from the 

shops where the steam-lathes run. 
There 's a lone mule braying against the line where 

the mud cakes fetlock-deep ! 
There 's a lone soul humming a hint of a song in 

the barn where the drivers sleep ; 
And I hear the pash of the orderly's horse as he 

canters him down the lane — 
Another cog in the gun-machine, a link in the 

selfsame chain. 

I am only a cog in a giant machine, but a vital link 
in the chain ; 

And the Captain has sent from the wagon-line to 
fill his wagons again; — 

From wagon-limber to gunpit dump; from loader' s fore- 
arm at breech 

To the working party that melts away when the shrap- 
nel bullets screech. — 

So the restless section pulls out once more in col- 
umn of route from the right. 

At the tail of a blood-red afternoon ; so the flux of 
another night 

[ i8] 



AMMUNITION COLUMN 

Bears back the wagons we fill at dawn to the sleep- 
ing column again . . . 

Cog on cog in the gun-machine, link on link in 
the chain! 



THE VOICE OF THE GUNS 

We are the guns, and your masters ! Saw ye our 

flashes ? 
Heard ye the scream of our shells in the night, and 

the shuddering crashes ? 
Saw ye our work by the roadside, the gray wounded 

lying. 
Moaning to God that he made them — the maimed 

and the dying? 

Husbands or sons. 
Fathers or lovers, we break them ! We are the 

guns ! 

We are the guns and ye serve us ! Dare ye grow 

weary. 
Steadfast at nighttime, at noontime ; or waking, 

when dawn winds blow dreary 
Over the fields and the flats and the reeds of the 

barrier water, 
To wait on the hour of our choosing, the minute 

decided for slaughter? 

[20] 



THE VOICE OF THE GUNS 

Swift the clock runs; 
Yes, to the ultimate second. Stand to your guns ! 

We are the guns and we need you ! Here in the 

timbered 
Pits that are screened by the crest and the copse 

where at dusk ye unlimbered. 
Pits that one found us — and, finding, gave life (did 

he flinch from the giving ?) ; 
Laboured by moonlight when wraith of the dead 

brooded yet o'er the living, 
Ere with the sun's 
Rising the sorrowful spirit abandoned its guns. 

Who but the guns shall avenge him ? Strip us for 
action ! 

Load us and lay to the centremost hair of the dial- 
sight's refraction. 

Set your quick hands to our levers to compass the 
sped soul's assoiling ; 

Brace your taut limbs to the shock when the thrust 
of the barrel recoiling 

Deafens and stuns! 

Vengeance is ours for our servants. Trust ye the 
guns ! 

[21 ] 



A SONG OF THE GUNS 

Least of our bond-slaves or greatest, grudge ye 

the burden ? 
Hard is this service of ours which has only our 

service for guerdon : 
Grow the limbs lax, and unsteady the hands, which 

aforetime we trusted ; 
Flawed, the clear crystal of sight; and the clean 

steel of hardihood rusted ? 
Dominant ones. 
Are we not tried serfs and proven — true to our guns ? 

Te are the guns! Are we worthy ? Shall not these 

speak for us. 
Out of the woods where the torn trees are slashed with 

the vain bolts that seek for us. 
Thunder of batteries firing in unison, swish of shell 

flighting. 
Hissing that rushes to silence and breaks to the thud 

of alighting ? 

Death that outruns 
Horseman and foot ? Are we justified? Answer, O guns ! 

Yea ! by your works are ye justified, — toil unrelieved ; 
Manifold labours, coordinate each to the sending 
achieved; 

[22] 



THE VOICE OF THE GUNS 

Discipline, not of the feet but the soul, unremit- 
ting, unfeigned; 

Tortures unholy by flame and by maiming, known, 
faced, and disdained; 

Courage that shuns 

Only foolhardiness ; — even by these are ye worthy 
your guns! 

Wherefore — and unto ye only — power has been 

given ; 
Yea! beyond man, over men, over desolate cities 

and riven ; 
Yea ! beyond space, over earth and the seas and the 

sky's high dominions; 
Yea! beyond time, over Hell and the fiends and 

the Death-Angel's pinions! 
Vigilant ones. 
Loose them, and shatter, and spare not. We are 

the guns! 



THE END 



^be Rilicrsific ptt0 

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